20 Things
by Scarlet Secret
Summary: 20 things you never knew about Rita Skeeter.


A/N: There seems to be a great many amazing '20 Things' fics about and I really wanted one for Rita! Enjoy.

1. Her mother died in premature childbirth and her father blamed her. At least until he died when she was 21 and Rita felt no guilt at all that for the last three years of his life she had supplied the booze that killed him.

And she had never stopped hating him just a little bit.

2. Even though she's a half-blood she didn't know she was a witch until the letter came. Her father, it turned out, really hadn't liked her mother and her being a witch was just one more reason to hit her, leading to Rita's early arrival into the world.

On her 40th birthday she resents that she's a month older than she should be.

3. The first person she met on the Hogwarts Express was a quiet, brown-eyed girl with a cascade of dark-blonde curls and Rita wished that she was that pretty and didn't have to wear her horrible, broken glasses. They sat together on the train and Rosmerta was her first ever friend.

When she reached Hogwarts she met Bellatrix and found her soul mate.

4. Bellatrix was a Slytherin and a genius and Rita was the star Ravenclaw player, and Dumbledore had loved them and though later in life they would deny it till they died, they had loved him.

When she writes her book she _forgets_ to interview all the people who had loved him.

5. When she was 17 Bellatrix scared her for the very first time by talking about death. Not causing it but just…death. Bella had wished that her mother would die and when she asked Rita who she hated enough to kill she had said Alice.

Looking back, she doesn't really regret it.

6. Bellatrix is the only person whom she told about her fear of dolls and the way that the eyes followed you. Bella was afraid of failure; Rita doesn't think anybody would believe her if she told them.

Apart from anything else she can't remember the correct, Latin names for the phobias that Bellatrix taught her.

7. She got her first good quill as a Graduation present from her Head of House and the old man's enchanted it to write her thoughts. Later Professor Flitwick earned a great deal of money for being behind the idea of Quick Quotes Quills, but Rita never forgot that she had the prototype.

She still has it at the bottom of her old school trunk.

8. When she was 20 Fenrir Greyback had proposed marriage and she thought he was joking when he wasn't. She wouldn't have married him anyway; Lucius adored her but his father threatened him and he was soon betrothed to Narcissa. Rita hated Narcissa because she had got her man and Narcissa hated Rita because she knew who her husband loved.

And she feels so degraded when he makes her wear glasses in their bedroom.

9. Her friendship with Bellatrix proved to be indestructible, even when Bella was a Death Eater – Rita knew there was nothing to be done about it, so she just accepts it and life is easier. Every week she gets an owl off Bella begging her to just run away with her, they had always wanted to live on a secluded little island somewhere, just the two of them.

Rita always claimed poverty.

10. Rita had wanted to play Quidditch professionally but McGonagall had stopped her and till the day she died she had always had a grudge against Minerva McGonagall. She had never brought her down through her articles though because of that one night after Bella was sentenced when the old woman had given her hope and whispered love to her.

When she sees McGonagall the old woman tries to smile at her but Rita ignores her.

11. When the Potters died Rita was the first on the scene, in her Beetle body, scouring for the scoop. She took one look at James' body and couldn't go upstairs to see Lily's, which was odd because she had never liked Lily really, but she could hear the child crying and never hated herself more than when she just left it there.

She hears Sirius' motorbike roaring when she leaves and wishes she'd gone back.

12. Thirteen years later she finally meets Harry and he's exactly how others have described him, James reincarnated but with Lily's eyes. The eyes don't bother her, but she remembers when a 19-year-old James had fumbled with her blouse and she can't look at Harry's slender, seeker hands.

She writes about his eyes instead.

13. The day Bella was on trial she sat in the court pretending to take notes, really she is staring into her friends dark forbidding eyes, wondering if Bella went after Alice because of what Rita had said when they were seventeen. Bella always did have a tremendous memory. After Bella makes her speech but just before she is led away she makes eye contact with Rita and the journalist knows for sure that yes, it was because of her.

She still doesn't regret it.

14. Both of them are tense in the cupboard and she wants to tell him that her father locked her in one too, but she doesn't think Harry would appreciate the thought that they have things in common. As her quill zooms across the parchment she wonders idly if he ever wore broken glasses and if spiders were his only friends – Harry Potter could have found a kindred spirit in Rita Skeeter, but she writes about his friends and he hates her.

She thinks it's probably better that way.

15. She's aware that Rosmerta is in love with her and she has loved the other woman all her life but they're both cowards at heart and neither can bring themselves to be that vulnerable so everything goes unsaid. But everybody thinks they're a couple anyway and they sort of live together, they just never got round to the sex.

Which is a real shame really, because she's been dreaming of Rosie since she was fifteen and has an abundance of ideas of how to make the barmaid scream.

16. Hermione Granger takes her job and traps her in a jar. She's not been so humiliated since McGonagall caught her in the bathroom for Prefects and Quidditch Captains after she'd lost her position and marched her back to the Common Room in her dressing gown, sopping wet. She hates Hermione Granger, and though it dulls over the months it never goes away.

Even when she is forced to write an article she can admire the ingenuity and appreciate the cunning, thinking that Dumbledore was right (_I sometimes think we sort too soon_, he had told her when Bella, loyal like a Rotweiller had defended her against McGonagall's ban) however she can not make peace with what the girl did to her.

They meet several times the year following the war and Hermione is civil, eventually even borderline friendly, after all, Rita is one of the few remaining familiar faces. But Rita simply CAN'T make peace.

17. One night, when the war is at it's absolute height and Rosmerta has already gone to bed, Rita sits in the Three Broomsticks drinking Firewhiskey and even she is afraid of what's going to happen to them all. An owl delivers a letter and she knows who it will be from before she even opens it.

_Do you have enough money for our island yet?_

_B._

Xx

The following night Voldemort is defeated. And so is Bellatrix. She keeps drinking and wishes she'd been more understanding to her father.

18. She is invited to the celebrations to her surprise and she is even more surprised when she is greeted without too much hostility. Molly Weasley even smiles at her, seeming to forget everything she's written about her real and adopted children, and comes over the speak to her.

Rita is, of course, already aware of what Molly has done but to have everybody give her three cheers for killing Bella is too much and Rita slaps her before storming out.

She is never invited to another function again.

19. Rosmerta finds her in their attic sobbing over an old picture six months after the end of the war. At first she is sympathetic but when she sees it is Bellatrix and becomes speechless Rita takes it as her cue to leave. They never see each other again but that is the night she finally kisses the barmaid exactly the way she has always wanted to.

20. She's destitute when they find her. All her money had gone into her self-destruction and she found herself living in a hovel in Knockturn Alley but couldn't bring herself to care that the rent she pays to the owner is not in coin.

She was dead for nearly a week before she had been found and only then it was the landlord looking for his weekly payment, and so few people are aware she has died that her funeral goes more or less unattended. McGonagall makes sure that she is buried in the same ground as Bellatrix, Rosmerta places the photograph against the headstone and Hermione lowered the old quill atop the stone surface.


End file.
